


introduction to redemption arcs.

by novasuper



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship goals, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 03, Set before "Pillows and Blankets", Trapped In Elevator, Troy Barnes is a Sweetheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26289478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novasuper/pseuds/novasuper
Summary: "You know who Troy is! Yeah. Troy will find me."–Abed Nadir,Conventions of Space and Time(04x03)
Relationships: Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir
Comments: 14
Kudos: 51





	introduction to redemption arcs.

**Author's Note:**

> oh look, it's yet another off-screen exploration of troy & abed's friendship, inspired by on-screen events!  
> special shoutout to @irenebadler for being my beta ❤︎

The way to apartment 303 goes through a painfully slow elevator. Troy has never taken it.

It's the kind of the thing that you don't notice until you do. It has taken Troy roughly six months to realize this, but up until this evening, Troy has definitely never ridden the elevator in their building.

He tries to think back as to why that is and comes up with some seemingly insignificant memories. There was him and Abed arriving at the building's entrance for the first time to see the apartment, and Abed muttering something about racing up the stairs. Then there was moving day, and Troy thinks Abed challenged him then too, to see which of them can carry more boxes up three flights of stairs. Whenever they return home from Greendale, they immediately go for the stairs, and on those rare times Troy comes back home alone, he chooses the stairs without even thinking about. He's in great shape and it's a force of habit. But now, as he clumsily tries to carry his newly broken leg up the three steps in front of the building, he can't help but wonder why it has become a force of habit.

Abed holds the door for him patiently as Troy scrambles through it, still not having gotten used to his crutches. Maybe he can convince Pierce to let him borrow that gadgety wheelchair he used when he broke both his legs, back during what Abed called "Season 2". He's always wanted to know if he can blow hard enough to bring down a house made out of straw, like in that story about the three little pigs, but he's willing to settle for moving a wheelchair around. Plus, he and Abed can race it. Yeah, he's definitely talking to Pierce about that one.

Abed closes the door behind him and fishes his phone out of his messenger bag. "Annie says she's on her way home," he informs Troy after a quick look at the screen, "and also that we shouldn't let your cast get wet."

"Duh. I know how casts work." Troy breathes out indignantly. He doesn't tell Abed that the reason he knows how casts work, is because he and his high school gang once threw a kid with a cast on his arm into a swimming pool. Troy isn't proud of some things he did in high school, that he hadn't realized were super mean until he came to Greendale. Annie is the only one who can expose him, and he's grateful to her for every day that she doesn't.

He limps his way across the hall, his feet automatically leading him towards the staircase, but he makes himself stop in front of the elevator. It feels strange and he feels weirdly out of place, but there is no way in hell he is hauling this useless leg of his up three flights of stairs.

"I'll let her know that we're home." Abed fires in that brisk demeanor of his, still looking at his phone. "Do you think it's okay to write things on your cast yet? I want it to say _Here lie the broken bones of T. Barnes_ , like the cast from Rear Window. It would have been better if you had a middle name, because the cast in the movie said _L.B. Jefferies_ , but I guess we can —" He looks up from his phone and he trails off, gaze landing on Troy's fingers pushing the up-button.

"What's wrong?" Troy asks, looking at his own fingers but Abed is already looking behind him.

"We're not taking the stairs?" He asks blankly.

"I can't." Troy gestures to his broken leg. "I'm pretty sure the guy in that movie didn't do a lot of walking around either."

"He was in a wheelchair." Abed states and cocks his head to the right, looking at the elevator before facing it. "Cool. Cool cool cool."

"You good, buddy?" Troy knows Abed doesn't like changes in his routine. "'Cause it's fine by me if you wanna go ahead and take the stairs. I can just meet you up there."

"No." Abed deadpans. "You need someone with you, in case you trip and fall or if there's a spontaneous zombie outbreak."

"You would really do that for me?" Troy tries, and fails, to hide how much he's moved by this.

"Sure. If there's a zombie apocalypse, I'd love to see a black person make it to the end. They never do in the movies."

"Tell me about it." Troy agrees as the elevator arrives and the doors in front of them open with a funny _ding_. He only manages to take one step forward, before one of his crutches gets caught on the gap between the elevator and the floor. He's about the plunge to his incredibly dumb death when Abed grabs his elbow, keeping him upright while his crutches plummet to the floor.

"Told you." Abed says after a beat. He picks up Troy's crutches and helps him hop on one foot into the elevator, where he then pushes a button and leans against the mirror next to Troy.

The space is a lot smaller than Troy imagined it would be. Their shoulders are pressed together in the tiny elevator and it's honestly lucky that Abed is as lanky as he is, because Troy doesn't think this box could even fit two of himself. When he was a younger he used to pretend another Troy walking around with him wherever he went, thinking what Troy thought, agreeing with every dumb thing he said, feeling great while the real Troy was sick or sad. That Troy would have had to take the next elevator, but that's okay, because Abed is close enough to the "real" imaginary thing.

They stand in comfortable silence as the weight of the elevator shifts and it starts going up. It's kinda slow and loud, which Troy figures makes sense since their building is pretty old. Abed is tapping his fingers on his jeans and Troy starts humming Daybreak, which gets a smile out of Abed and he matches the rhythm of his fingers to the melody.

It's all chill and fun and they are one-hundred percent _nailing_ that performance, when the elevator decides to jolt with a loud rattle and comes to an abrupt halt.

Troy loses his balance and lands painfully on his ass, his broken leg hitting the floor awkwardly. Next to him, Abed manages to stay on his feet, but he's grasping at the walls of the elevator like he's looking for a rail that isn't there. It's gone darker, the soft yellow light replaced with dull white glow. It strips the world of color, which makes it feel a little like they've crossed into different dimension. Maybe they did. That would be _awesome_. But Troy reminds himself that if they had, Abed would definitely tell him, so these must be just emergency lights. Not another dimension, just an emergency.

"What just happened?" Abed splays his hand on the elevator doors and looks frantically from one corner to another.

"I think there's a power outage." Troy grumbles, still a little disappointed they're not in another dimension, and starts clambering to his feet. It takes him ten whole seconds to stand up, in which Abed doesn't try to help him, which feels off.

"Not cool, not cool, not cool." Abed mutters, banging his fist lightly on the door. When Troy was in elementary school, a teacher showed them a documentary about poaching. It was awful. He can never forget the rhino's panicked fidgeting as it was trapped in that cage. Abed is reminding him of that right now.

Troy's phone has no signal and he limps over to the buttons, pushing the red one with the bell on it a couple times. Thankfully it works and Troy pushes it again, longer this time. The ringing echoes loudly enough to definitely attract someone's attention outside. Even if it doesn't, Annie said she was on her way, so one way or another they're getting out soon. Troy knows he isn't worried about being stuck in an elevator, but he's agitated anyway. When he finally takes his finger off the alarm button, he finds out he's right to be.

The ringing is replaced with a high-pitched whine. It's the sound Abed makes when he's in distress, the one that sends every nerve in Troy's body into high alert. "Hey, buddy, it's okay." Abed is shaking his head and the shrieking just gets louder. "It's okay, someone'll come fix the elevator. We'll be out in no time."

But none of it seems to register with Abed. If the situation weren't so unnerving, Troy would be impressed by how long Abed can go on like that without stopping for breath. His friend sinks to the floor, rocking slightly as the shaking and shrieking continues, and Troy knows exactly what comes next. He has to act fast, because he is no way in shape to carry a catatonic Abed out of this elevator. Commence Operation _Don't Let Abed Go to His Happy Place._

He lowers himself to the floor as best he can so that he's in Abed's eye level. He squeezes his shoulder, and without releasing the pressure there, he drapes his palm over Abed's eyes. Every time he's witnessed Abed withdraw deep into his mind, his eyes have always been open with a blank stare, so he thinks maybe closing them will help.

He has no idea if it's the right move or not. The group seems to think that Troy speaks perfect _Abed_ , but really, he doesn't think anyone can speak it. It's like the rest of the world runs on FM while Abed runs on AM, and Troy just digs the music that is Abed's frequency, but it doesn't mean he can get on the broadcast himself. He's winging it half the time, bouncing actions and reactions off Abed like sunbeams off a mirror. It breaks his heart to see that mirror crack, but it also makes him want to work harder in finding the right angle to hit it with the light.

"Abed, listen to me." He says, keeping his hand over Abed's eyes. Abed is breathing hard but Troy can swear the shrieking subsides a little. Troy takes a breath and says the first thing that comes to his head. "What's the deal with Inception? Seriously, every time I watch it, I'm just confused."

Abed stops shrieking and for a moment, Troy's worried he lost him. But then he wraps his fingers around Troy's wrist, so Troy keeps going. "I mean, why didn't he just pinch himself to see if he was dreaming? That's just common sense." Abed cocks his head slightly in Troy's direction, and the latter can feel his eyebrows furrowing slightly beneath his palm. It means he's listening. Troy allows himself a stifled sigh of relief.

"I'm just saying, there's gotta be a better way to tell if your kids are real, than to sit around waiting for some dreidel to stop spinning. It's like that time Shirley made cookies and I didn't know if they were chocolate chips. Did I ask a yo-yo what was up? No, I asked Shirley. And then I spat it out, because it was raisins. Who bakes raisins into cookies, anyway? I don't care if it's healthier, you can't offer somebody delicious-looking cookies and then sneak wrinkled up fruit on them. I know Shirley thinks she's a good Christian, but that's just mean. It took me weeks to be able to trust again. Okay, maybe not weeks. She made me peanut butter cookies the next day, I couldn't stay mad at her. We also found out Pierce was allergic to peanuts when those cookies almost killed him, so I guess a few raisins didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. You know, I never thought I'd say this, but thank god Britta was there. Hey, we should bring her on the next episode of _Troy and Abed in the Morning_ , have her tell the story of how she saved Pierce's life by plunging his EpiPen into his chest. That was badass. And now I'm thinking we should ask Annie if she's allergic to anything, 'cause I don't think I could ever hit somebody's chest with a pen like that. I hate needles. But you can't tell that to Jeff, he makes me give him a dollar every time something scares me—"

"Everyone's scared of something." Abed chimes in quietly.

Troy nods, even though Abed can't see it. "Exactly, it's okay to be scared." He says pointedly. "Indiana Jones is scared of snakes. Charizard hates water. Inspector Spacetime is scared of being alone." Abed doesn't answer immediately and for a moment they just sit there, breathing.

"But then he met Constable Reggie," Abed says eventually, his voice a little louder, "and he wasn't alone anymore."

"You know it, buddy." Troy says with the biggest smile on his face, and just as he says it, the lights come back on. The elevator breathes back to life and its weight shifts, renewing its journey across the floors.

"I'm okay now." Abed says.

Troy takes his hand off his eyes and Abed stands up, then helps Troy get back to his feet too. The elevator opens on their floor and Troy lets Abed exit first, after which he turns around to watch Troy shuffle out. He looks like nothing has happened and Troy doesn't know if he should say anything, because he really can't speak _Abed_ and he had no idea Abed was scared of elevators. What he does know though, is that he's succeeded in finding the right angle to hit the light, and that's enough for him.

Well, for a few minutes, at least. After they get into their apartment, Abed heads to the kitchen to make buttered noodles and Troy sits down on the bar stool, leaning his crutches against the counter and feeling curiosity bubbling inside him. He wants to know what happened in that elevator, because he wants to help prevent the next time, if he can. If Abed prefers not to talk about it, he'll say so, and Troy will at least know that he tried. It takes about ten minutes of comfortable silence, with Abed cooking and Troy contemplating, for Troy to resolve to ask.

"I've been claustrophobic pretty much my whole life." Abed beats him to it.

"Holy—" Troy jumps, startled into forgetting his question altogether. "Are you a mind reader? Can you tell what I'm thinking right now?"

"I can't read minds." Abed says and his head oscillates as he talks. "But I can read people, and normally after this type of situations, they have questions. I knew you were going to ask me what happened."

"Yeah." Troy says sheepishly. "What did happen? Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"I didn't think it was important to the story." Abed says as he strains the noodles. "None of the places we go to in Greendale are small, and here I always take the stairs. My claustrophobia is a detail from my Origins, but this is the first time it has come into play in the main plot, like Jeff's co-worker, Alan."

"So let me get this straight," Troy frowns. "You're scared of small spaces, like elevators."

"Yes."

"But we've built like, a thousand blanket forts. We literally sleep in one." Troy points to their room behind him. "Isn't that a small space?"

"It is, but in there I can come and go as I like." Abed explains. "I'm more scared of being trapped in a small space against my will, where I can't get out and nobody will find me."

The last sentence makes Troy's heart clench. "That sounds awful, buddy."

"It is." Abed says matter-of-factly. "But it hasn't been much of an issue since high school."

"What happened in high school?" Troy asks, curious now about Abed's _Origins_ , a time when he didn't know Troy and Troy didn't know him. Sometimes Troy feels like there never was such a time.

Abed sets a bowl of buttered noodles in front of Troy and picks up another one for himself. "I got pushed into lockers a lot, since the 3rd grade." He provides blankly, like he's talking about the weather or a dentist appointment. "The other kids always locked them from outside and sometimes it was hours before somebody let me out."

And suddenly Troy is very, very not hungry.

 _How many kids have you shoved into lockers, Troy?_ A harsh voice inside his head goes, yells, blames. Troy has no idea what's the answer to that. He also has no idea how many times he walked away from a closed locker without looking back once. He has no idea who used to let the kids out afterwards, or how many times he shoved them in a locker again when he saw them the next day. He has no idea how many, but just like that, every single one of those kids is now wearing Abed's face. Was it peer pressure? Maybe. But it's been so easy to love who he is when he's hanging out with Abed, that he forgot that hiding from your past-wrongs is wrong.

The lump in his throat becomes tears before he even realizes it's there. He doesn't normally feel self-conscious crying in front of Abed, but right now he can't meet Abed's eyes. He might as well have been one of the bullies that gave Abed claustrophobia, and he's appalled by his audacity to cry right now. Abed furrows his eyebrows in front of him, looking at Troy in his special kind of confusion about facial displays of emotions, and it makes Troy feel like a bug under a magnifying glass. And what's worse, it makes him cry even harder. For every day that Annie doesn't judge him for the person he was in high school, he should be getting her flowers, because High-School-Troy doesn't deserve to be off the hook like that.

"I'm sorry, Abed." He sniffles, trying to stop the tears and take responsibility for his actions like grown-ass adult.

"It wasn't your fault." Abed shakes his head once, still looking at Troy in confusion.

"I could have been." Troy admits with shame. "I was… kind of jerk, back in high school."

"I know." Abed deadpans and brings a mouthful of noodles into his mouth, while Troy's jaw actually drops.

It takes him a moment to find his voice. "What do you mean you know?" He screeches.

"I know you were a bully in high school." Abed says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "When we first met you were still wearing your letterman jacket and you called me 'Slumdog Millionaire'. You also tried to tell me later that year that us being friends meant I only had to do stuff for you. Being a bully was just in character for who you were back then." This perfect recollection makes Troy wish the ground would swallow him right here, right now, but then Abed continues. "But you're not wearing your letterman jacket anymore, plus, you eventually came around and helped me catch Fievel. That's in character for who you are now."

"So…" Troy feels the lump forming again. "So you don't care I used to be a jerk who shoved people into lockers?"

"No." Abed shrugs. "You didn't know any better back then, but you know it's wrong now. Nobody hates Zuko for what he did when he was chasing Aang. You have a redemption arc. It's why you were able to help me calm down when we were stuck in the elevator. We wouldn't be friends if we didn't bring out the best in each other."

And just like that, Troy is crying again, now for a totally different reason. He stands up, grabs his crutches and bravely limps his way around the counter, almost tripping over one of Abed's DVDs. He enters the kitchen and wraps his arms around Abed, his right ear pressed into Abed's shoulder. Abed expectedly just stands there stiffly while Troy hugs him, but then he wraps an arm around Troy in return.

When Annie walks into the apartment six minutes later, they're still standing together like that. She frowns at first, but then she comes into the kitchen as well and wraps her arms around Troy from behind. He's sandwiched between a friend he bullied and a friend he would have bullied, and he likes them better than any friend High-School-Troy ever had.

* * *

"You have to let me out!" Abed yells to Toby who's standing outside of the booth.

"No, not until Stockholm syndrome sets in." Comes the muffled reply. "How long do you think that'll be, a couple of hours? Would you love me if I got you a churro?"

Abed can't spend a couple of hours locked in here. _Not cool, not cool, not cool_. He bangs on the inside of the booth, trying to pop plastic lock open. "I'm not sure how much air there is in here!"

"And still you talk." Toby taunts.

Abed can feel the distress coming on again. He's about the channel the panic the only way he knows how, shrieking it out because he just doesn't have enough room to keep it all inside, he can't breathe and he's prepared for the space in front of him to vanish and become Inspector Spacetime's spaceship that's bigger on the inside, that isn't this small and confined, when—

_Abed, listen to me. What's the deal with Inception? Seriously, every time I watch it, I'm just confused. I mean, why didn't he just pinch himself to see if he was dreaming? That's just common sense._

He yells his panic out, but it doesn't come out as a shriek. "Troy will find me!"

"Who?"

"You know who Troy is!" That's it. The last time this happened, Troy was there. Abed focuses on Troy's voice, still echoing in his head. He isn't scared anymore, because he won't have to spend a couple of hours in here. Someone's coming.

"Yeah. Troy will find me."


End file.
